When I was reciting the sipaara after the Fajr namaz, Amma gave me some money and said, “Go, see if Kallu has opened his store and buy two eggs from him. Otherwise, what will I give Abba when he returns from the mosque?”

I ran to Kallu Chacha’s store, and when I returned home with the eggs, I found Nusrat sitting on my low stool. I yanked the stool from under her and she fell backwards.

Amma smacked me on my back and said, “Couldn’t you have taken it later?”

Nusrat had hurt her head. Rubbing it, she mumbled through her tears, “Someday, when you sit on my stool, I shall also pull it from under you just like this.”

We had four low wooden stools at home. Abba had made these from the gular fig tree that used to grow in our courtyard. He cut down the tree because boys would throw stones at it to get to the figs. He was no carpenter that all the stools he made would have come out alike or been stable. He had just chopped up the wood somehow and hammered in a few nails to hold them together. Amma had designated a stool for each of us, without...

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